Measure for Measure

Going into the Red

So I made a pillar of fire (red crepe paper and some orange plastic) and a pillar of cloud (eh… cotton-wool balls); sang “How did Moses Cross the Red Sea”; the waves parted and so here we are, pilgrimming through this barren land…. Phew!

And it is at this point I get to leave the Exodus – as the Israelites head off into the sunset desert, towards the Promised Land. (So I hope that tomorrow’s post will be my LAST on Exodus

🙄

thanks for bearing with me!)

I head back to the 21st Century West. As I get out of my time machine… everything seems strangely familiar.

The Egyptian economy had been propped up artificially for over 400 years. By creating a slave underclass out of generations of Israelite immigrants, the Egyptians had managed to build monuments, towns and cities based on a kind of temporary illusion of wealth.

Then the commodity of slaves left.

And in the West, we also built our economies on a dream – spending non-existent money on a repeated basis: an economy based on an illusion of wealth.

Then the commodity of unlimited credit ‘left’.

And then there came, or is coming, a day of reckoning. One day, someone counts up how many beans make five and realises that we haven’t got any.

After the Exodus, there must have been “cuts” in Egypt, a change in leadership and a new policy for industry. I wonder how it worked out. I know a bit about Egypt and its civilisation, gods and history – but I don’t know how or why it came to an end. But it did, eventually- despite being such an advanced and wealthy empire.

The Red Sea was held apart artificially for a time. Then the water returned to its true level.

There is the way things seem and the way things are. And there is the way things should be.

You are grand at summarizing and adding a modern “take” to it. I have eagerly awaited each post. Thanks for all your research and all your bravery to tackle a topic some would disdain.

I do agree with you that our current economic mess is just the type of “house of cards” that the Ancient Egyptian culture had built themselves. Only we should have known better becaue we all studied economics in 8th grade or so, and we all knew it would not stand. Hmm.

I heard a preacher once, saying the children of Israel should have sung and celebrated before they crossed the Red Sea, because they had seen God do so many miracles to extrecate them and protect them that they should have been excited about what the next miracle would be…but instead, they murmured again and had to be shown He is faithful. Oh well. The preacher called the sermon “Right Song; Wrong Side”. Always thought that catchy.